Valve made a triumphant return to the hardware market with the Steam Deck and its OLED-toting counterpart, and now it’s having another crack at virtual reality with the Steam Frame. The Steam Frame is the long-rumored headset from Valve that had previously been codenamed "Deckard." The company also announced a new Steam controller and PC called the Steam Machine. All three devices are coming in early 2026.
Valve says the Steam Frame is a wireless, "streaming-first" headset and you can hop into your games as soon as you pop it on. It supports both VR and flatscreen games. The company made a plug-and-play 6GHz wireless adapter that you slot into your PC (or Steam Machine). It has a dual-radio setup to help minimize interference, with one radio dedicated to streaming audio and visuals to the headset, and the other for Wi-Fi.
But you don't need a PC to play games on the Steam Frame. As with Meta Quest headsets, it can run games as a standalone device. The headset has a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, 16GB of RAM and up to 1TB of built-in UFS storage. There's a microSD card slot too.
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The Steam Frame runs on a rechargeable 21.6 Wh Li-ion battery. There's one USB-C 2.0 port at the back that you'll use for both charging and data transfers. You can recharge the battery at a rate of up to 45W. It's unclear how long the Steam Frame's battery will run on a charge.
The battery is positioned on the rear of the headstrap. So you won't necessarily need to have an external battery pack that's attached to the system by an annoying cable. It'll be possible to swap the standard headstrap (into which the audio drivers are integrated) for a different option, perhaps one with a larger battery.
Even with the battery built into the headstrap, Valve says the Steam Frame weighs just under a pound at 440 grams. The core module — the front part — is 185 grams (6.5oz) and the headstrap weighs 245 grams (8.6 ounces).
The Steam Frame has an optimization feature called Foveated Streaming. Valve says this uses low-latency eye-tracking (powered by two internal cameras) to optimize the detail in the image wherever your eyes are looking. The company claims it can offer a "10x improvement in image quality and effective bandwidth." Foveated Streaming is said to work for every game in your Steam library.
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